


the vestiges

by fishycorvid



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy(ish) Ending, Canon Divergence, Character Death, F/M, Heavy pining, Season 3, not major character death but it's there, set from The New Captain on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-05
Updated: 2018-05-05
Packaged: 2019-05-02 18:56:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14551218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fishycorvid/pseuds/fishycorvid
Summary: Charles is yelling at him, probably, but Jake hasn’t been able to think since exactly 1:13 in the afternoon today, has just been stumbling in a lost kind of haze of tight-lipped smiles and gazes that don’t meet.(He thinks about her apologetic eyes, the nervous bite of the lower lip, the anxiously clenched fists, the tight shoulders. The pain in every line of her face when she told them they had to end this if they wanted to salvage their friendship, and it’s good that they do this now. It’s all very professional, very measured. In the wake of Dozerman’s death… a necessity.)





	the vestiges

**Author's Note:**

> i've been working on this on and off for a few days and now it's 19 pages on google docs, so enjoy! this came from my rewatch of The New Captain and just thinking.... what if?

Charles is yelling at him, probably, but Jake hasn’t been able to think since exactly 1:13 in the afternoon today, has just been stumbling in a lost kind of haze of tight-lipped smiles and gazes that don’t meet. 

(He thinks about her apologetic eyes, the nervous bite of the lower lip, the anxiously clenched fists, the tight shoulders. The pain in every line of her face when she told them they had to end this if they wanted to salvage their friendship, and it’s good that they do this now. It’s all very professional, very measured. In the wake of Dozerman’s death… a necessity.) 

“Jake! Are you even _listening_ to me?” Charles slaps him hard in the arm, and he flinches back with an overexaggerated yelp. 

“Admittedly, Charles, I’m not! I’m kind of freaking out here!” Jake hisses back, scooting back in his bed so he’s out of reach. 

His friend gesticulates wildly. “So am I, Jake! So! Am! I!” (exactly like that, exclamation points after each word.) “You think I’m happy about this?” 

“No, you’ve been yelling at me for the last hour!” 

Charles points a finger directly in his face and Jake shys away. “You have to get her back.” His voice is calm and cool now. “You hear me, Jakey? You gotta get her back!” 

“Charles. Get out of my face, or I swear to God--” 

“You started this one foot in and one foot out and you know it! This is self-sabotage, because that’s what you do!” 

Jake glares at him for a moment, and Charles, in a surprising show of courage, all things considered, glares back, arms crossed. 

Jake exhales slowly and crumples back in on himself. “How?” 

“Go! Go to her, Jake! Now!” 

There’s confidence, now, replacing the fog of embarrassment and sadness and anger and a profound sense of _loss_ (though he knows he never really lost her, per se; when he got back to his desk she was still sitting there, doing her paperwork, albeit steadfastly avoiding his eyes). 

“Okay,” he breathes, pulling on his jacket, hardly even registering Charles’ soft cheer of encouragement in the background. 

Jake swings open the door and freezes. 

The hallway outside is entirely empty. He doesn’t really know what he expected.

And yet.

It feels like something has come dislodged inside of him, like some intrinsic part of him has fallen through the cracks and has been lost, now, for good. 

He pauses, and considers, considers the seriousness in her voice, the strain in her face like she was being torn apart, the pain and regret in her eyes. Considers that first real kiss, real and electric and yet so peaceful and accepting. Considers the first date, with its awkwardness and beauty. Considers their banter, sharp and bright and offset by barely-suppressed grins and a goddamned unassailable sense of camaraderie-- 

“I can’t do this, Charles.” 

“What? But-- Jake, you can’t just give up now!” the other man’s voice is practically an indignant screech, full of entirely unearned anger. 

Jake spins on his heel, and the confidence has dissipated and he can’t do this anymore, and he can almost feel himself spiraling back and back and back. He closes his eyes, tight. “Please leave.” 

_“What?”_ Charles says again.

“Charles,” Jake chokes out, squeezing his eyes tighter. “Please. I don’t want to do this. You didn’t see her. You weren’t there. This--” he gestures to himself, his apartment, his general state of affairs. “This isn’t what she wants.” He laughs, dry and only a little hysteric. “I don’t want to do this.” 

There must be something in his face. Some signal. Some form of genuine emotion that makes even Charles pause. 

“Okay,” Charles says, softer than he’s probably ever spoken before. “Goodbye, Jake.” 

“Bye,” Jake whispers, throat dry.

He sits down on his bed, eyes open, and he doesn’t cry. Just stares at the brick wall, unblinking. Something, he thinks, feels deeply wrong about all of this, like somewhere along the way something that was supposed to happen just didn’t, leaving him alone, burning and broken, a derailed train long since having left its track. 

Jake doesn’t sleep that night, even as exhausted as he is. Instead, he watches the ceiling, and tries not to think about any other possible outcomes, tries to think about the present as an inevitability rather than a strange fluctuation in what was meant to be.

____________________

When he goes back to work the next day, there’s something inexplicably quiet about the precinct.

Amy doesn’t meet his eyes anymore, not that he expected her to. 

(If their gazes met, Jake thinks he could probably read her face and figure out what kind of beast he’s dealing with here; the idea tantalizes him; he wishes he never learned to decipher her at all.) 

During the morning briefing, he makes a joke at his own expense and, instinctively, turns to Amy. She freezes mid-laugh and snaps her mouth shut, turning away robotically. Something is stinging at Jake’s eyes, but, for once, he does not want to investigate. 

(Terry pulls him aside later and tells him, apologetically, that he can’t assign him to any cases with her. Listlessly, he agrees, and something is wrong with him, it must be, because something is pressing down on his chest and he can’t breathe for a few seconds.)

Later, during their lunch break, Rosa flings herself down into Amy’s empty chair and kicks her feet up onto the other woman’s desk. “Hey,” she says, like she might add something else, and then clearly thinks better of it. 

“Hey,” Jake returns with the slight nod he’s become accustomed to exchanging with Rosa, cramming a slice of cold pizza into his mouth. Her nose wrinkles, but only slightly. 

“What happened yesterday, man? You’ve been weird, for non-Captain-Vulture related reasons.” 

The detective shrugs, subconsciously rolling his chair back a bit, away from Rosa. “Dunno, man. Nothing. It’s all… cool. Great, you might even say,” he half-says and, embarrassingly, half-squeaks. 

Rosa snorts, tossing her hair back over her shoulders and leaning forward. “C’mon, man. There is no way you actually thought that was convincing.” 

Jake sighs and drops his falsely confident demeanor. “Fine. Amy broke up with me,” and there’s that ever-persistent stinging again, “not that there was anything to break, actually, since we weren’t actually dating, and she made that relatively clear, and I guess it’s good that it happened so early, but-- okay, listen, I’m really getting tired of explaining it, because it takes so damn long. We good?” 

The consistent wrinkling of her nose throughout their conversation (emotion-induced and Jake’s-disgusting-eating-habits induced, not that she’s one to judge when it comes to the latter) has turned into full-blown disgust. “Gross. Feelings?” 

“Yeah,” Jake laughs mirthlessly, and there must be something in his face, because Rosa softens almost imperceptibly and leans across the two desks to awkwardly pat his hand. 

“It’s okay, dude. We’re gonna go get drunk tonight, so you can get wasted and sob onto my shoulder, and I can forget all of this as soon as possible.” 

He smiles weakly. “Cool.” 

Rosa stands up and walks around the desks just to punch him in the arm, hard enough to ache. “Cool.” 

Jake grins up at her and massages his shoulder. Predictably, because that’s how the last 24 hours have been going for him, the grin fades. The ache does not.

__________________________

As promised, they do get drunk.

Unfortunately for Rosa, Jake’s at a certain stage of intoxication in which he’s way too emotionally open and way too touch-craving, so he’s leaning against her in a booth at Shaw’s, arm slung around her shoulders and head resting against hers and babbling aimlessly. 

“I miss her,” he mumbles, slumping against her further. If he was less alcohol-ridden, he would notice the slight tensing of his friend’s shoulder. But Jake doesn’t. 

Rosa sighs and pats his head awkwardly. “I know, Jake. You’ve told me. Many times, in fact, just in the last hour or so.” 

Jake looks up at her, eyes hazy but achingly honest. “Why doesn’t she like me, Rosa? Why won’t she… What did I do wrong?” 

Rosa’s heart twists, just a little bit. “Jake. Stop. You’re spiraling.” 

He chuckles without any mirth, any joy. “It’s not a choice, Ro-- I just don’t know what to do.” Jake turns his head to lean down against her shoulder, squeezing his eyes shut. “Don’t look at me,” he whispers, more quiet this time. 

Above him, he can almost _see_ Rosa quirking a tight, sad smirk at him. And he might be imagining it, but he’s pretty sure he can also feel her wrapping another arm around him and squeezing him tighter. 

They just hold each other for a while, the dull, roaring chaos of the full bar around them raging in the background, lights dim and golden and distant. 

After several minutes pass, Jake pulls back slowly, eyes honest and sad. “Thanks, Rosa,” he murmurs. 

Rosa smiles at him, eyes just as dark and unknowable as ever. “It’s okay, Jake. I know how it feels.” 

On a better day, he might have pushed any chance he could get at her personal life, a curious grin stretching his face and crinkling up his eyes, teasing and jabbing. 

Today, though, Jake just nods and steals another sip from Rosa’s whiskey, pushing his free hand through his hair, swallowing with a still-dry throat. “Yeah,” he says wearily. “Yeah.” 

She leans her shoulder against his for a moment, in a silent kind of solidarity.

__________________________

Jake wins a free cruise.

He opens the email at his work desk, and for the first time in ages, Amy looks up at him and scoffs. “Jake, did you even enter for that kind of crap?” 

His heart twists (is this really the first time she’s voluntarily talked to him about something non-work related? It hurts, far too much), and he scratches at the back of his head to mask it. “No. But maybe it’s just ‘cause I’m so great.” A half-hearted grin that doesn’t seem to convince Amy, who shakes her head. 

“Jake, it’s a scam. Come on.” 

Jake sighs and shakes his head, deleting the email. “Yeah, yeah, I know, Ames. No need to rub it in.” He feels that indescribable _thing_ again, like something has been shifted a little bit to the left of where it should be. 

She rolls her eyes, and almost subconsciously, Jake searches her gaze for something other than annoyance and scorn. He finds, somewhere in the planes of her face, sadness. 

It was for two tickets, anyway.

__________________________

Six weeks later, he gets more mail, a physical letter now. This time from One Police Plaza.

_Det. Jacob Peralta:_

_We find it only right to inform you that Doug Judy, better known as the Pontiac Bandit, was murdered by a past benefactor on an international cruise ship. According to the testimonies of the other staff upon the ship, he was attempting to contact you, despite your pursuit of him for the better part of the last decade. His mother also believed you should be contacted, though in her description of you she named you as, quote, “Mangy Carl”, unquote. Our apologies for this loss. At least now, your search is over._

_Regards,_

_One Police Plaza_

Jake exhales softly and leans back in his chair, staring up at the ceiling. “Okay,” he whispers, trying to ignore the lump in his throat. “Okay, okay.” He brings his fist up to his mouth and bites down softly on his knuckles. “Okay.” 

“Jake?” someone asks softly. 

He turns his head just too late to see Amy school her face into a distant, professional concern from the genuine worry it had been.

“Are you okay? What happened?” 

The detective shakes his head and waits until he can trust himself to speak. “Pontiac Bandit was-- found dead.” 

Amy bites her lip and clenches her fingers, unmoving. “I- I’m so sorry, Jake. That’s awful. Do you… know how it happened?” 

Jake laughs wryly and leans his head against the heel of his palm. “It was on that cruise. I bet you he sent the tickets. He knew.” 

Unsaid: _He was waiting for me when he died. He was waiting for me to save him. And I didn’t._

Amy’s lips pull down slightly at the side and her shoulders hunch. “I’m sorry. For what I said.” Dark eyes flicker up to meet his for a moment, and then away. 

He just nods. The fluorescent lights make her look tired, he notes absently. Her eyes are shadowed and almost afraid. Jake spins his chair away and curls his knees to his chest, staring down at the opened letter without seeing, vision blurring. 

That day, everyone treats him differently, though they already had since everything with Santiago. Terry gives him a yogurt (the good kind, full fat Greek with fruit and everything, and even though Jake doesn’t like yogurt that much, he takes it and savors its sweetness); Rosa pats him on the shoulder as she passes his desk (and he almost cries; he misses that kind of friendship, that casual kindness); Gina slides over to him on her functioning spinny chair, kisses him softly on the forehead, quirks an ironic smile at him, says a snappy one-liner (as she does), and slides away; Amy just watches him. Sad, wide, miserable eyes that watch Jake when she thinks he isn’t looking at her (but he is, almost always, always when he doesn’t mean to). 

Holt calls him into the office late in the afternoon and gives him a nod as he enters. “I heard about what happened to Doug Judy. I know he considered you a… friend. Of sorts. You must be…” He gestures up and down at Jake. “In pain.” 

Jake smiles tightly. “All due respect, Cap’n, but I’m just fine.” 

“Detective Peralta.” 

The captain’s eyes stare into his, dark, intense, and solemn.

“Fine, I’m miserable, okay?” He flings up jazz hands and grins, ignoring the burning in his eyes. 

Holt leans forward slightly, folding his hands together. “Would you like to speak with me about your… feelings?” There’s a vague look of disgust on his face that almost makes Jake laugh. 

“Really, Captain Holt, I’ll be okay. I just need time.” 

The captain leans back again, worry evident in his eyes that Jake actively chooses to ignore.

__________________________

That night, the whole squad goes out to Shaw’s.

Despite the entire point of the outing being to cheer up Jake, he ends up sitting alone at a booth in the corner, nursing a beer that he doesn’t particularly enjoy. He rolls it over in his hand, idly picks at the label with his fingernails. The sound of the crowd soothes the ache in his gut as he tries not to think about the last six months with no success. Jake groans and drops his head onto his arms. There’s a pain in his temples that hasn’t gone away in a while now, and it’s only getting stronger. 

“You should probably stop drinking if you’ve got a headache, kiddo,” someone drawls above him. Gina, Jake thinks, and picks his head up from the table, shooting her a weak, sarcastic grin. 

“I’ll drink as much as I please, Goose,” he says with annoyance (he’s not sure if it’s fake or real anymore), takes a swig, and instantly gags. 

“You’ve been drinking too much, Jakey. I’m cutting you off.” 

Jake groans and leans back against his booth, lets her daintily snatch the bottle out of his hands with a thumb and a forefinger. Somewhere in another room, someone is drunkenly singing karaoke. 

He’s still trying to figure out what song it’s supposed to be when Gina slides in next to him, hip-checking him against the wall so she has room. “Scootch,” she says, taking a drink from his beer and subsequently choking. “Jake, why the hell would you do this to yourself?” She shoves the beer across the table away from both of them. 

“I dunno,” he mumbles, but he doesn’t think he’s talking about the beer anymore, and now Gina is looking at him with genuine concern in her eyes. 

“God, you absolute dumbass. You still like her, don’t you? For realzies? You gotta get over her, probably via meaningless sex with some stranger.” She waves a hand at some random, vaguely attractive dude across the room. “You know what I mean?” 

Jake jolts up and glares at her, and there must be something in his gaze, because Gina flinches back a little. “That’s not it. I just--” He lets out a frustrated, broken sigh and pinches the top of his nose. “I just lost a friend today because I didn’t look at the signs closely enough. I lost Amy in an entirely different way a few months ago. I don’t want to talk about it.” 

“But you should,” Gina says, and hesitantly places a hand on his shoulder and squeezes lightly. 

He huffs out a tired laugh. “Nah, I think I’m just gonna do what I did what I did with my dad.” 

Her brows furrow. “What, repress the hell out of it and ignore it until you literally die and let your regrets and anger and utter shame pour over you?” 

A hoarse, slightly hysteric chuckle flies out of him, grating in his throat. “Aw, Gina. You know me so well.” 

She doesn’t do anything for a moment except stare at him with absolute pity and scorn in her eyes. “Jacob Peralta, I’m literally wired to thrive off of total dysfunctionality and this is somehow making me feel uncomfortable. That’s how you know you done fucked up, kiddo.” 

“Whatever, Gina,” he mumbles, and, not for the first time over the last year, Gina can feel her heart break a little bit for this man that has become like a kid brother to her over their years working together and growing up and just _living_ this life adjacent to each other, and now there’s no fight in his eyes, no fire, no patented Peralta stubbornness, no call to action, no will to move. 

“You have to fix this.” 

“Okay,” Jake whispers, but he’s not listening and they both know that. 

There’s a long pause, in which Gina watches him and he avoids her gaze, staring steadfastly at the wooden grain of the table, trying to pick out any patterns he can find. “Amy’s coming over here,” she says after a while, as calmly as she can, and Jake’s head shoots up. “Don’t look at her, you idiot! I’ll just subtly and casually get up, and you keep staring at the table like a gross old alcoholic.” 

He snorts and waits for her to leave (as distinctly unsubtle and uncasual as she always is) before looking up to see Amy standing a foot away from the table, hands twisting uncertainly. “Hi,” she breathes, so quiet he almost can’t hear it, and he gives her a nod of greeting. “Can I sit down?” Her voice is still quiet, like Jake is a scared animal that might run away at the slightest sound. When he nods again, she takes a seat gingerly, across the table from him, hands folded and fidgeting in her lap. 

“What’s up?” Jake asks, looking anywhere but her. 

Amy doesn’t know why she’s here. She’s watched him all day today, watched the exhausted deadness in his eyes that has been lurking there ever since that cursed day almost six months ago and has only now become overt, watched his absolute stillness. She’s heard the quietness of his voice, distinctly felt the lack of laughter in the precinct over the months. Sure, it’s still _there--_ it’s not like she’s absolutely quashed his will to live, he’s just pining-- but it’s changed. Something’s gone. Missing. Lost. 

“I just came to check on you.” 

Still not meeting her eyes: “Okay. Well. I’m fine. You can go back to the squad, if you want.” 

A slow breath in, and a deliberating pause. “I’m here because I want to be here.” _Because I care about you. And because I miss you._ And she does: she misses his smile and his warm hugs and his banter and his dumb jokes that made her roll her eyes and his kisses and even his annoying, messy habits. 

Then Jake does look at her, with these dark, tired, broken eyes that look like they’ve been torn inside out. “Thank you.” 

“I’m here,” Amy repeats, and, slowly, giving him time to move away, reaches across the table and touches her fingertips to his knuckles. Even from where she’s sitting, she can hear the strangled little inhale, see the brightness in his eyes (she doesn’t know if it’s intoxication or tears). 

“Thank you,” he whispers again. 

“I’m sorry. About everything,” and the lump is in her throat too, and she can barely see through the haze of golden lights and tears. “I want to be friends again. I miss that.” She misses the rest of it too, but she’ll take what she can get, she’ll give anything for to have anything with him again. 

“Me too, Ames,” barely audible, more exhale than anything else. He flips his hand and briefly brushes his fingers to hold hers for a fraction of a second before pulling away. 

They talk, then, for the rest of the night, until the rest of the squad is gone. About police things, about professional things, dodging the topic like they always do, and it feels like they’ve regressed back a year, two years, back to days of tense silence and words that mean a little more than surface value, days of aching; and yet it’s so much better than anything they’ve had for the past few months. They go home separately. Hopeful smiles in the backs of different cabs.

__________________________

The easiest way to describe the change is this: Terry starts giving them cases together again.

The first time he calls their names one after the other in six months, the entire briefing room inhales as one, and it feels like something in the air has relaxed. Across the room, Rosa shoots him a tiny smile that she’ll deny later if asked about it. Jake can’t suppress the returning grin, and Santiago catches his eye. She’s smiling, too, softer than he is, in a way that he wouldn’t catch it if he hadn’t seen it before (he knows the shape of it against his lips, against his skin; he wishes he could forget; he never wants to forget). 

They argue over police work, bicker about the mess on his desk that’s slowly encroaching into hers, about the best way to interrogate a victim. They bet on whether or not Rosa has ever hooked up with a perp (Jake says yes, Amy says no, Gina yells across the room to say multiple. Gina is right, but Jake gets half the money, and Amy rolls her eyes at both of them but mostly him), bet on who will solve their cold case the fastest, bet on who they’ll encounter while on door duty. They invite each other over to their apartments to watch movies and eat takeout and discuss the day and their friends and the weird criminals they have to talk to. 

It’s so close to being enough, because they’ve craved each other’s connection for this long and they finally have it. 

But it’s impossible to forget what is so fresh. 

Because Jake still remembers the taste of four shots on her tongue, remembers tracing his fingers over bare skin, remembers the shape of her lips against his, remembers how it felt to hold her, to touch her with no need for an excuse or a reason. He dreams of hundreds, thousands of nights of sitting on the couch or talking or watching her do the crossword or getting beaten at board games or making dinner or trying to teach her to dance. He thinks of her eyes on his, full of affection and warmth. After only two days of having it, that present and that future, and six months after losing it, he misses it. 

Because sitting across a desk from the person you love down to each individual atom and not being able to have every part of them manifests as an ache in your chest that won’t go away, as roots anchoring your feet to the ground, as a magnetic pull to them that won’t go away. 

It’s impossible to forget what is so fresh, but they’re both trying to be satisfied with what they have left of each other. 

Terry starts assigning them cases together again. 

When Amy is told to go undercover as Isabelle Cortez and try to ferret out a madman’s sister, Jake thinks he might go insane, and Terry must see the tenseness in the lines of his face so he tells him he’ll let Jake and Charles go too as fake gynecologists, to pull her out if it gets too dangerous. Jake exhales in relief and slumps back against his hard, uncomfortable chair, grinning triumphantly at Santiago. Amy shoots him a vaguely suspicious look, but it’s quickly overtaken by the thrilling concept of being chosen to go undercover in a maximum security prison, of all places. 

It entirely sets Jake’s nerves on fire, and not in a good way, because he doesn’t even want to _think_ about Amy in that kind of danger. 

“Be careful, Santiago,” he says as they sit in the beat-up car pulling into the dusty prison. 

She shoots him a tense smile and replies, “I always am.” 

_Not careful enough,_ Jake thinks, but before he gets the chance to say anything else, Charles is turning around in the front seat and beaming at the two of them. “Aw, it’s so great to see you two being friends again! If you continue along the current path I’m sure you’ll be married by 2020--” 

“Gross,” Amy grumbles, crossing her arms over her fake-pregnancy belly, and Jake winces before immediately following with a too-quick “Yeah! Don’t make it weird, Charles.” 

Boyle shoots them what is clearly meant to be a coy smile but just comes off as deeply disturbing, and Jake shudders. 

They get Amy into the prison, Jake and Charles are lead to their shared office with their camera and laptop. Mostly, it’s cripplingly boring. 

Unfortunately, the overall sense of boredom is undercut with moments of complete, all-consuming terror, like whenever Maura Figgis gets within a foot of Amy Santiago. 

The thing is, Jake is cognitively aware that he’s messing with Amy’s ability to do her job. He _knows_ that he’s only making this thing longer and significantly worse for everyone involved. 

When Amy storms in to confront him about it and orders Charles to leave, he thinks this might be the day he perishes, except it won’t be in a spectacular gunfight like he’s always dreamed, it’ll be at the hands of the coworker he still carries a pathetic torch for. 

“What the fuck is your problem, Peralta?” she hisses. “Why aren’t you letting me do my job?” 

“I don’t know!” he admits, flinging up his arms. “I just don’t want to see you get hurt!” 

Amy freezes at that, fists clenched, but her eyes are still full of steel and anger. “You have to stop it, Jake. We need this op to work out. I don’t want you to have to leave, but you have to pull it the hell together.” 

“I know. I will,” he says, sharper than necessary (there are glass shards settling in his stomach, he thinks). She nods curtly, spins on a heel, and storms out. 

And she gets the information the next day. 

She even turns to the security camera that she knows Jake is monitoring and mouths “I told you so” when Maura isn’t looking. Plans for her extraction are in the works; she’ll leave in the morning; she’ll get a briefing with Jake, Charles, and an agent tonight. 

After the briefing, Amy goes back to her bunk and curls up to go to sleep. She thinks about how there wasn’t any true anger in Jake’s eyes when she was right and he was wrong and tries to breathe calmly. For almost a year now, she’s had an unshakeable feeling that she has been doing something incorrectly (a feeling she can’t abide, but it evokes more dread than frustration, this time). She doesn’t know how to fix it. 

Her cell door creaks open. When she blinks open her eyes, she can see the silhouette of a woman with a knife. 

Amy bolts upright, frantically looking around for anything to arm herself with, but this is a prison, there shouldn’t be any usable weapons on the prisoners. Nevertheless, the woman moves forward, and as Amy’s eyes adjust, she can see-- 

“Maura?” she whispers hoarsely, and Maura Figgis nods, jutting her jaw out. 

“You’re a mole,” the other woman growls. “Can’t let any information get outside.” She grins at Amy’s shaky breathing as she backs up against the wall. “I’m assuming those fuckin’ gynos were working with you? No problem. I’ll get them too. What can anyone do about it? I’m already in jail.” 

“Actually, jail is a minor, local holding area run by local police, whereas a prison is--” 

“Shut the fuck up,” Maura snarls, pointing the knife at her. “I should’ve known you weren’t for real. Prissy bitch.” 

Before Amy can so much as move, so much as speak, the much heavier and taller woman is lunging at her, stabbing just above her right hip on the side of her abdomen. She gasps and crumples to the ground (her fake pregnancy belly is falling out of her shirt, but she can’t bring herself to care as she clutches at her wound). 

“Of course that was fake too,” her attacker sneers from above, and then flicks her eyes back to the wound, which is bleeding through Amy’s fingers. “I think I’ll just leave you here to bleed out.” 

Maura exits the cell and slams the door behind her. She can hear a key turning in the lock. 

And then, footsteps. 

“Amy? _Ames?_ Oh my God, I-- Holy shit, are you okay? What happened?” Panicked voice, edging on hysterical, hands clutching at her arms. She pries her eyes open and tries to breathe evenly. 

“It’s-- s’okay Jake. Just get me out of here. Call an ambulance.” 

“What _happened?_ Why didn’t you--” 

“There’s nothing anyone could have done to stop this. S-she figured out I was a mole and she stabbed me. You couldn’t have saved me--” 

“But I should have,” Jake hissed, and she forces herself to look into her eyes and see the anguish there. “I should have been there. You never should have gotten hurt.” 

She wants to tell him that it doesn’t, that she can barely feel the red wetness soaking into her clothes and onto her hands anymore, but her eyes are slipping closed and Jake is shaking her and saying something, and she wants to listen but she can’t anymore because everything feels so muffled, so far away. 

Then, nothing.

__________________________

Jake doesn’t know what happens after that, either, except that after some unknowable amount of time, he finds himself sitting in the back of an ambulance, looking at the blood on his hands, and someone is wrapping a shock blanket around him. Amy is there, too, lying on her back as people try to save her life while hurtling across a pothole-infested highway at 70 miles per hour. Her eyes are closed, and her mouth is slightly open under this mask that’s pumping air into her. He can’t think. Can’t look at anything except the blood and _her,_ always her, so still and quiet as everyone bustles around shouting things he can’t quite hear and everything feels like it’s crushing him into the ground, like he’s being crumpled up like so much aluminum foil. He tries to breathe, in and out, in and out; Jake knows how to get anyone through a crisis, he’s taken classes on it, but he can’t save himself, can’t make himself breathe steadily, not now, not here.

“Sir, we’re going to need you to step back,” a young man informs him breathlessly. “We need room to move.” Jake stares at him blankly. He can’t comprehend it. 

“No, I-- you don’t get it, I _need_ to be here.” 

“I understand, Mr., ah--” the man checks his badge, “--Peralta, but we need you sit down. Please.” 

“I don’t think you understand,” Jake says, voice empty. “I need to be here. No matter what.” 

The man looks between him and Amy and bites his lip. A long moment. Jake can wait.

“We just want you to sit down,” the EMT replies, more quietly, and guides him over to a seat. No windows in the back of an ambulance, so he just stares up at the ceiling and imagines he can watch the stars go by. He tries not to look anywhere near her until they make it to the hospital.

__________________________

They tell him, after an hour of desperate, breathless waiting, hours of calling everyone in the squad, Gina, hell, even his mother, that he can come into the room.

“The stab wound is deep,” a doctor says. “She looks... rough. But she’ll be okay. We stitched her up.”

Jake thinks he might cry. “Thank you,” he manages to whisper. “Thank you.” 

There’s a soft, triumphant grin on the doctor’s face as she pats him on the shoulder and opens the door for him. 

Instantly, he falls into the chair by her bed (he hasn’t sat since that bench in the ambulance; how could he?). “I was so worried,” Jake says to her sleeping face. She doesn’t stir, and he is only slightly disappointed. Slowly, he grabs her hand, turns her fingers over in his. Bitten, ragged fingernails. Slim bones. Soft skin. It’s familiar but at the same time different; there’s a scar here, acquired in the last year or so, that he doesn’t recognize, and, mindlessly, he brings it to his lips. He drops her hand immediately afterward and places it to lie next to her on the bed. “Sorry,” he breathes out, guilt and loss hitting him like a punch to the stomach. 

(Maybe, in another time, he might be allowed to do these things without that kind of pain.)

He sits there for a long time, watching the slow rise and fall of her chest. Revels in the fact that, despite it all, she is still alive. Still here. 

He tries to convince himself that he doesn’t still love her. 

Jacob Peralta has always been a bad liar.

__________________________

Amy wakes up to a tired, rough-looking detective at her bedside. “Hey,” she rasps, smiling weakly. Her lower lips cracks and starts bleeding, a slow trickle of red meandering into her mouth.

“Hey,” Jake says back. She laughs hoarsely. 

“You look like hell, Peralta.” 

He huffs, opens his mouth like he’s about to crack a joke, and then clearly thinks better of it. 

“Where am I?” Amy asks softly.

“Still in Texas. We couldn’t get you far. It was critical. We’ll fly back home as soon as they clear you, though. I already told Charles to go, though; he really misses Genevieve.” 

Amy closes her eyes. _Home._ The concept of home feels elusive to her. Far away. Her empty apartment doesn’t feel like home anymore. It’s too quiet for her, now. 

“I miss the precinct,” she murmurs, and Jake nods. “And I miss home.” 

He doesn’t say anything back, just smiles at her sadly, a smile that is not Jake at all. 

Exhaustedly, she closes her eyes again, and lets herself slide back into sleep.

__________________________

They fly home on a Tuesday.

Amy falls asleep on Jake’s shoulder. 

He tries to convince himself it doesn’t feel more right than anything has in a year.

__________________________

He and Holt make the idiotic mistake of trusting Bob Anderson (Annnderson? He’s pretty sure the captain said his name had three ‘n’s) a few days after he gets back and things go to hell.

WITSEC contacts them three days after they uncover his betrayal and the connections to Figgis’ operations. They tell the both of them to come into their office. 

“We are transferring you,” an unnamed marshal says, “away from here. You cannot tell anyone where you are going for the sake of your own safety.” 

Holt nods, a tired look on his face. 

Jake swallows away the lump in his throat and asks, “Do I get to choose my own name? Follow up question: on a scale of one to ten, how badass can it be?” 

“No. And it’ll be a three at best.” 

The detective groans. “God, my name’s gonna be Larry, isn’t it?” 

Their marshal smirks back at him. “Actually, that’s a good idea. How about Larry Sherbert?” 

“Do I get a choice?” Jake mutters. 

“Of course not. This is WITSEC. At any rate, we’ll be moving the both of you to Florida. We won’t tell you where in Florida until you get there. You will create entirely new identities. You will not, under any circumstances, tell anyone from your former lives where you’re going. You can tell them that you’re going, but not where. Or who you’re becoming. You will be given three hours to say your goodbyes. It is safe to say that your squad and family are people you may say goodbye to. For everyone else, they don’t need to know.” 

Jake’s throat is dry. “So, this is really happening, isn’t it?” 

“Yes, Peralta. We got called in here. Clearly, this is happening.” Nonetheless, Holt swivels his head to look the marshal dead in the eye. “Is this really happening, though?” 

Without humor: “Yes.” 

The lights are harsh and white, glaring down from the ceiling on their faces. Almost like an interrogation. Despite the brightness of the lights, the whole thing takes on a dreamlike state. Everything feels distant and far away. 

“Are the two of you prepared? More information will be given to you once we’re on our way.” A slight smile. “We’ve got a long ride ahead of us, anyway.” 

“Yes,” Captain Holt says. 

Jake can’t speak, can’t even make himself breathe in and out anymore. He can feel himself drifting away, far away. _I can’t leave. How can I leave? The rest of the squad is probably still in danger, and I can’t go without them or I know I won’t be able to protect them, can’t protect_ her--

A solid hand comes down on his shoulder, and he looks up with a start to see Captain Holt looking at him, steadying him with a hand. “Come on, Peralta.” His eyes are heavy and beseeching. 

“Okay. I’m ready.” 

Holt holds his gaze for a moment before nodding briskly and turning to marshal. “May we be dismissed?” She nods and waves them off, as if disinterested. 

They drive back to the precinct in Holt’s car, silent as if under a spell. Jake doesn’t even try to turn on the radio. There’s no point to any of it. He just watches the cars go by, the stoplights changing, the streetlights passing. 

When they get back to the precinct, things are quiet and tense, like a string being stretched to the breaking point. 

“Well?” Rosa asks (always the bravest, the first to speak when it’s most needed. God, Jake is going to miss her). 

Charles moves forward slowly. “Jake? Are you okay?” 

 

“I’m leaving,” he says quietly. Holt, standing behind him, nods. “We both are. We’re being sent into WITSEC. We didn’t argue. It’s…” Jake swallows. “It’s for the best.” 

He can’t look at Amy. He won’t let himself. 

(He remembers, the night before she went to Maximum Security, he went to her apartment and played cards and board games with her under a single light from her living room. She’d looked at him, once, after beating him at Scattergories, and there was something in her eyes that he’d recognized from before they kissed for the first time in the evidence locker. It was longing. And, somewhere, a deep piercing regret. Later, he’d explained it away to himself as his imagination. But his heart aches for her. It aches.) 

Nobody knows what to say. 

Jake turns and walks back out the door, down to the parking garage where his car waits-- and he’s going to miss that car, torn seats, smudged windows, dirty exterior and all-- and he leans against its hood. In, out. In, out. It feels futile to try to calm his breathing. He knows he should go back up to the precinct and say goodbye, soak in everything for as long as he can before he drives away to Florida. Indefinitely. _I’d rather die here and now than live out the rest of my life in Florida._ He laughs wryly and steadies himself against the metal of the car. His legs are shaking, he notes distantly, and almost chuckles again. 

“Hey.” 

He knows, instantly, that it’s Amy, and it’s like his entire body is tensing and relaxing at the same time. “What are you doing here, Ames?” 

She circles around the car to stand directly in front of him. He can hear her inhale slowly, as if to steady herself. 

“Couldn’t let you leave without saying goodbye.” 

Jake stares at her. The lights on her face, her slightly parted lips, the shine of her eye, the slight lean towards him. It’s all deeply familiar, and it pulls at his heart like someone’s trying to slowly rip him apart. 

“I don’t want to leave,” he whispers, and it comes out much more brokenly than he’d originally intended. 

There’s a moment, then, where Jake can see her make a decision, but it still comes as a shock when she leans forward onto her tiptoes and gently presses her lips against his. It feels like an exhale after a year of holding his breath, like suddenly all his frenetic energy is rushing out of him as he kisses her back, winding his arms around her and pulling her close. When she breaks away, slowly and reluctantly, she leans her forehead against his and he doesn’t let go of her. 

“I don’t want you to leave, either,” she murmurs, and he can feel her breath. “One year apart from you was more than enough.” Because maybe they had spent the entire year next to each other, but there’s a difference from being near someone and being with them, genuinely, and Jake thinks he might actually die if he has to leave. 

“I’m so sorry. About everything.” 

She chuckles sadly and runs a hand down his face, as if marveling at his presence. “I’m the one who should be sorry, Jake. Things could have been different. Things _should_ have been different.” 

“I’ll miss you,” he breathes. “So much.” 

Amy doesn’t respond to that, just kisses him again, more forcefully, stroking her hand through his hair before pulling back once more. “What if you don’t come back?” _What if I can’t save you?_

“I will,” he says, and it's almost as if he's already coming home. “I have to.”

**Author's Note:**

> well, thank you so much for reading through this long mess! tell me if you caught any mistakes; i wrote the majority of this one day so it's very probable that i fucked something up. 
> 
> please leave a comment or a kudos if you enjoyed, and thank you again for reading this!! i might write more in this universe, by the way, so that could be fun.


End file.
